Global Neighbourhoods

Hillary Clinton's Open Mouth Policy

Okay, this is kind of mean, and I don't want it to impact who you Americans out there vote for president. It's a question that came to me during Super Tuesday and I have not deeply researched it, but do any of you recall seeing a picture of Hillary Clinton with her mouth closed?

I've been taking note over the past 10 days, and every shot I see has her jaw wide open. What's that all about? Oversized dentures? Nasal congestion? Advice from a bad campaign manager?

Maybe our friend Hugh MacLeod should sell her the GapingVoid handle. Come to think of it, she may be a bit short on cash, what with that bad $5 million investment she recently talked about. Maybe she could just use GapingVoidette.

Anyway, if you have a shot f her with mouth shut, please post or send it to me. Also Hugh, now that the link got your attention, how about a nice cartoon showing us why Hillary's mouth is always open?

Best political ad I've seen

OK, in the interest of transparency, I am voting for Barak Obama tomorrow. It will be with the greatest passion and least ambivalence I have felt in voting for a presidential candidate in my lifetime.

But even if that were not the case, this ad is the best political ad I can recall seeing. If it were not my candidate, I would still love the message and style and positive attitude.  It is not actually an ad, but a 5 minute video clip, from something called DipDive. I got it from a Twitter friend. If anyone knows the story behind it, please leave it as a comment.

Astroturfing & getting slimed inside the beltway

Geoff Livingston, whose PR practice inside the beltway is primarily for technology clients talks about astroturfing and ther slimey practices of political PR practtitoners inside the Washington DC beltway.

For you youngsters out there, astroturfing is a term coined by one Charles Colson who worked in the White House for Richard Nixon.  Whenever a newspaper or broadcast station said something unfavorable about the President, the news organization would be inundated with calls and letters in defense of the president--all produced by a small handful of paid Colson Lieutenants.

Colson called it "astroturfing." The campaign looked like grassroots, but in fact it was artificial like the stuff at the Houston Astrodome.

Geoff reports that the practice remains widespread among DC PR practitioners, news that I find far from shocking, but still depressing.  To date politicians have used social media to get the word out and to get money in. Some day, I hope they learn about its conversational value.

Chinese beat blogger to death; ban Paul Walsh for reporting it

Yesterday, Paul Walsh reported that Wei Wenhau, 41, a Chinese construction company executive, was beaten to death by Chinese authorities for unauthorized video blogging. This, he reported has led to thousands of Chinese expressing outrage on internet chatrooms. He also admonished Google's "disgraceful behavior" in it's policy of complicity with the Chinese government while touting a slogan of "Do no evil."

Today, Paul reports that his blog, Segala has been banned in China. Paula writes that he is doing precisely what many Chinese bloggers do. He is using a proxy server to bypass the Chinese censors.

But there may be a curve ball, that would be a new one on me. I just tried to subscribe to Segala with my Google Reader and could not.  This could be some sort of tech glitch, but I tried three times. Coincidence, perhaps. Perhaps not. A few weeks ago, when I was writing about Egypt's Wael Abbas, who posts videos on YouTube about police briutality, YouTube temporarily took his videos down before restoring them. youTube is of course, owned by Google.

Personal Democracy Forum Accuses TechCrunch of Identity Theft

Through Robert Scoble's shared items, I learned about Micah Sifry, a founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and author of the TechPresident blog has accused Michael Arrington and TechCrunch of identity theft.  Micah says he sent Mike a nice email note asking to resolve the issue which went unanswered. He also sent it to another TechCrunch exec who promised to speak to Arrington.  Then Arrington went onto national TV talking about how he wanted TechCrunch to set criteria for the next president.

I have been chiding TechCrunch for the silliness of the apparent results of the Techcrunch Presidential Poll . If this poll means the tech community should seriously back Ron Paul whose currently way ahead, then I would argue the tech sector will have no real influence on the election outcome. On closer reading I've discovered that you can vote once per day, rather than just once, which hints that TechCrunch is looking for more traffic rather than an accurate pulse read on the tech community preferences.

Micah's charge is far more serious than mine. He has escalated his issue in a very short time and it is fair to wait to hear how Arrington responds to it and personally I think it would be wise for him to respond.

Techcrunch Poll. Vote as often as you like

I wrote a few days ago about the silliness of the Techcrunch Poll where Ron Paul continues to be the runaway leader among all candidates and Dennis Kucinich leads among Democrats. Still true, but I can change all that.

I voted for my choice a second time. It went through without a problem. It's like Florida 2000 for the rest of us. I wish I could talk longer, but I thing I'll go back and give my own candidate a few more votes.

TechCrunch Poll: It's a Ron Paul landslide

TechCrunch may have wanted to increase its influence when it asked readers to take a partisan vote for president based on the tech-related positions of each hopeful. Right now, Ron Paul is by far the top vote getter in either party with more than twice the votes of all Democrats combined.  Among Democrats, Dennis Kucinich is snugly in the lead over Barack Obama.

This may say more about the TechCrunch constituency than it does for the likely outcome of the upcoming election.

Techcrunch post detects whole stockpile of smoking guns in Sam Sethi saga

This is getting ridiculous.

Michael Arrington weighs in with a mysteriously received dubiously dated Blognation term sheet for a half million pounds from Secora, and ailing British Venture firm. The post is the tip of the dirtpile. Read the comments and watch the story unravel.

Beijing, Bush & the Dalai Lama

Every now and then, I just cannot avoid stepping into a political bucket. It's off topic for this blog and I usually get shouted at by someone, but today's simultaneous recognition by Congress and President Bush, who attended the Dalai Lama's Congressional Gold Medal Award ceremony, is the first time that the current president and Congrees have done something together that I whole-heartedly endorse.

In fact, it is only the second time I can recall Bush doing something I considered praiseworthy and courageous, the first being a reasonable approach to the issue of illegal immigrants, which was squelched by both political parties. Bush becomes the first US President t be photographed with the Dalai Lama.  Neither Clinton nor Carter ever dared for fear of pissing off China.

And China has made clear that it is indeed pissed off.  They don't like the Dalai Lama, because after they took his country (Tibet) away from him, and burned its ancient temples to the ground, lots of Tibetans and freedom loving people in the world, wanted him to get his country back

That's unlikely to happen. And in the end, the US is as unlikely to take further action toward that goal, as China is likely to do more than shout a bit over the recognition bestowed on this victim of their expansion.

China and the US have grown too interdependent on each other to escalate over this issue.  And Tibet is too tiny, devoid of resources and remote for the US to do much.

But it's nice to see Congress and the President get together and do something decent for a religious leader who has inspired a great many people and who has continued to carry himself with strength and dignity through his life in forced exhile.

Hillary Clinton and the 'have-a-beer' Factor

I watched the Democratic presidential panel (it wasn't really a debate) Yearly Kos convention on Ustream Saturday.  While I was exhilarated by  the citizen participation and what it forebodes for American politics, I was disappointed in the performance of the two Democrat front runners. The closer Barack Obama comes to being electable, the more cautious and less candid he becomes. Worse than him, it seemed to be, was the performance of Hillary Clinton, who seems to be able to hide any possible hint of a human inside her thickening veneer.

She reminded me of something I had learned, long ago, before I was even old enough to vote, when I was a copy boy for the old Boston Herald Traveler, a newspaper that bares no resemblance to its descendant, the Herald American.

This was back in 1963.  A copy editor named Jack Cook, took me under his wing.  He was pehaps my first journalistic mentor.  He also loaned me his 1949 Volkswagen when I had big dates and the car certainly increased my cool factor over using the MBTA to take a coed home.

I was worried about Goldwater stealing the election from Lyndon Johnson and Jack explained to me the "have a beer factor."  Jack had covered politics for more than 20 years.  He was an expert on the Boston rough house style.

When it comes to the presidency, he taught me, it's not about ideology.  Neither is it about domestic or foreign policy. If it was about experience, then Nixon would easily have beaten that junior senator from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy.

Jack's point was not about the impact of alcohol.  It was more about the conversation, the way it would have been described in the early 60s. Jack, I'm sure is long gone, but over the years, the have-a-beer concept of just sitting down and chatting with the person who would be president. There is something about the image that says, the other person is accessible and knows enough about you--even if you disagree--to somehow look at the world with a bit of your eyes in the White House vision.

People would indeed rather have a beer with Jack Kennedy than Richard Nixon. George Bush senior had his faults, but he seemed more human and accessible than did his his opponent Michael Dukakis.  There are very few nice things I have to say for the current son of Bush, but he did seem like someone easier to have a beer with than the Al Gore that ran against him or the John Kerry who followed.

Can you picture sitting down and having a beer, or even a white wine spritzer with Hillary Clinton? I cannot. On the other hand, I would love to have a beer with Bill Clinton, and in that, there may be an essential difference between the current candidate and her husband.